Women and minorities having a tough go on teaching exams

Published 4:38 pm, Saturday, July 4, 2015

ST. LOUIS — The pool of prospective K-12 instructors is getting smaller in Missouri as large numbers of college students are failing the tests required to become teachers.

And while some argue that higher failure rates raise the bar for teacher quality in the long term, it’s feeding immediate concern of a shortage of women and minority instructors.

Both groups are failing the tests at higher rates on exams to enter teaching programs and to gain certification.

The gender gap is problematic because the tests are cutting off the very people most driven to the profession. Women represent three-fourths of the nation’s teachers.

The racial disparity also is troubling because, while classrooms are becoming more diverse, the pool of available teachers is not. Research shows that students generally perform better when they share a similar cultural background with their teachers.

The state’s position is that the exams are doing what they are supposed to do: ensure that only the most qualified candidates become teachers.

At the same time, the officials in the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education say they are concerned that the exams could be discouraging diversity.

A number of academics across Missouri say the state is right to be troubled.

And many are pointing first to research suggesting that standardized tests often contain inherent biases, treating people as identical and not taking into account differences in race, culture, socioeconomic background and different learning styles.

Nor, some argue, should the exams be used as the primary litmus test of teacher qualification.

“The irony is that these tests are not a good predictor of teacher success,” said Michael McBride, a researcher at Northwestern Missouri State University. “And frankly, a lot of people who do well on standardized tests have no business being teachers.”

State officials counter that Missouri’s teacher exams have been vetted extensively and don’t contain any bias.

“The question of why do certain groups score higher or lower is a bigger conversation,” said Paul Katnick, an assistant commissioner with Missouri’s department of education. “We need to continue to think about the root causes of the gaps, but we are confident that it’s not bias.”

Despite the differing opinions, the imbalance in tests scores is stark.

In a survey of 10 Missouri colleges, women scored lower than men on four out of five of the tests that make up the Missouri General Education Assessment, the tests required to be accepted into a teaching program.

Jeff Edmonds, a middle school math teacher in Chicago, conducted the survey between 2013 and 2014 when he was a doctoral candidate at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Edmonds found that men scored better than women in English, math, science and social studies, while women scored slightly better than men on the writing portion of the test.

The same kind of gap is present on exams taken by teaching school graduates who are seeking state teacher certification. Missouri is in the process of revamping the tests, reflecting a national push for more rigorous teacher preparation programs.

Of the tests required to teach in Missouri’s elementary schools, the state reported that 42 percent of white students passed all four of the tests at the same time compared with only 6 percent of black students.

State and federal governments started gravitating toward standardized testing in the early 1980s, as part of a push for more accountability.

Recently, that call has grown louder in some government corners as lawmakers have blamed teachers and the colleges that train them for poor student achievement.

But critics say government’s fondness for standardized tests stymies what should be the goal: a teacher pool filled with educators from varied backgrounds who can use their unique knowledge to improve student performance.

“Standardized tests are a language,” said Timothy Wall, a colleague of McBride who also studies test bias at Northwest Missouri State University. “If you know that language, you’re going to go far.”

Wall said there was an art to teaching not captured in exams: “You have to be able to motivate and inspire to teach. That’s not always present just because someone has a great test score.”

A better indicator of teacher quality is their level of grit, McBride said. The idea of grit as a determining factor of achievement is based on research from Stanford University that says self-control, resisting temptation and how well someone is able to persevere and fight through obstacles are more efficient indicators of success.

Despite the criticism, standardized tests are the norm. And both the Pearson education company that designed the tests and the state department of education that endorses them say they are a fair way to assess teacher competency.

Laura Howe, a spokeswoman with Pearson, said the company worked hard to come up with tests specific to Missouri. Those tests were then scrutinized by a bias committee made of practicing teachers and faculty from teacher preparation programs who look for ambiguous language, culture-specific references and other forms of bias.

Katnick, of the state department of education, said standardized tests were just one part of the evaluation process. Teaching candidates are also observed in the classroom and evaluated on their performance.

But he also stands by the tests, saying they are making sure that only qualified teachers wind up in the state’s classrooms.

He added that the bias committee was set to look at the tests again this summer out of an abundance of caution.

But Alexander Cuenca, an assistant professor of education at St. Louis University, said reconvening the same committee was not a worthwhile exercise.

Cuenca, who also serves on the Missouri Advisory Board for Educator Preparation, said neither the state nor Pearson had provided enough information on the people who make up the bias committee, their backgrounds, their methods or how they were trained to spot bias.

He also notes that a New York judge has already ruled that tests designed by Pearson in that state discriminated against minorities.

Cuenca said overreliance on biased standardized tests could lead to the closure of different teacher preparation programs around the state, particularly the ones that serve minority populations.

“No one is saying we should lower the bar,” he said. “What we need is a process that’s fair.”